There is something about the first of August that makes me start planning for fall. I’ve mentioned looking at fall fashion, but it’s bigger than that. Summer is great. Long sunny (or rainy) days, nonstop novel reading, writing, golf, tennis, swimming, vacations, and a slower pace. I love it. We all love it. Less structure feels so good.

But it is that very lack of structure that hits me on the head the first day of August each year. I begin to feel antsy. I know that in Arizona we have another two months before we can count on anything even similar to fall. Other parts of the country consider Labor Day that turn toward winter, but the desert doesn’t comply until late October.

This morning I drove to the library to return the novel I finished reading last night and I swore I was not getting another. In the past eight weeks of summer, I have read at least a dozen. I’m tired of reading. My eyes are bleary, my hands swollen from holding the hard back books, and my neck cricked permanently toward my belly button.

I also put away my computer and said, no more writing for at least three days. I’m tired of rainy days, and to be honest I’m also tired of sunny days with nothing to do but sit on the balcony of my condo, or walk into a more forested area just down the road. I’m sick of eating on the fly using whatever is in the house. I’ve gotten quite creative with ingredients and left-overs this summer, but I digress…

I’m sick of the buzz of the fans as they move air through my apartment. I’m even tired of the gorgeous night skies with stars so close I feel I could touch them. I’m sick of all the little touristy shops in the little town where I stay. I’m sick of the six restaurants and the two dollar stores and the bakery. That’s a lie – I will never be sick of the bakery.

So today I got out the calendar and turned the page to September. Ahhh. I felt better immediately.

Volunteer at the elementary school each Wed.– write that on the calendar. I may volunteer a second time – one evening per week with parents. I’ll choose Thurs. for now and write it in pencil. A creative writing course at the college. Tues and Thurs. mornings. I look on-line for a fall writing conference anywhere on the west coast. I plan my fall garden – small as it is.  I’ll need to prepare the soil soon.  I decide to retake a Speedy French course on Monday evenings. I make a note to order those cabinets for the garage and buy the screen door for the back patio. I try to remember if I bought a navy blue sweater last year. I’d like a navy blue sweater – cashmere maybe. I get back online and look for end of summer sales on outdoor patio furniture. I need a new chaise.

Seeing those notations in pencil on my once empty September page fills my heart with joy. Busy at last!

I know for certain that by May of 2014, I will be planning a trip up north. I will be tired and cranky and wishing summer would arrive. Ah, two months with nothing to do!

I know – we humans are crazy, right?  Or is it just me?  Don’t answer that.

 

The sun is just about to slip over the roof line of my two-story condo to blind me as I sit on my east-facing balcony, and to warm the cool morning breeze I’ve been enjoying since 5:30. It is still late July, but already I am wondering about fall fashion colors and if I need boots this year. Silly, I know, since it’s still 110 degrees in the valley of the Sun.

But it’s almost fall. Kids in Arizona have either started school (last week) or are headed to school (next week). Store aisles are packed with school supplies. I love school supplies. I have fond memories of choosing each item carefully, as if it would be the last, and putting them in my wooden school box,

Yesterday, I found composition books for fifty cents at Wal-Mart; which got me started on my annual buying spree. I have dozens of pens and pencils in a container on my desk, but I still find that each fall requires new ones. And pencils — there is nothing like fresh pencils right out of the packaging, each with an unused eraser, pink and firm; the smell of lead and wood as you sharpen them for the first time is heavenly. There are no bite marks along the surface; they are full length, sharpened to a fine fragile point; the weight between your thumb and middle fingers feels fantastic. Ahh.. fall!!

New pens are full of ink; the roller moving easily and creating smooth patterns of letters. I choose a pink one for breast cancer, a pack of black, blue, red and green. Uni-ball – Pilot – Papermate and Bic all sit bright and shiny in my black metal mesh container. I even treated myself to a new eraser still shaped in a perfect rounded rectangle and smelling of rubber. Ahh.. fall.

I don’t need a backpack and my practically new black leather folio briefcase is fine. A ruler? There’s one in the kitchen drawer – I can pass on that. Two reams of computer/printer paper – check! An Angry Bird folder – a must have. A mini-stapler for travel – the staples so tiny and cute it’s amazing it works. I make certain my notebooks are varied in color. Blogs, short stories, exercises and quotes and a possible new novel.

Index cards – 3×5, white, ruled. Last year I bought unlined by accident, and they just don’t work. Stickies. I reach for pink or a variety pack of colors; then see a variety pack of sizes – so many choices. I stick with yellow and the original sized square. After all, don’t we always say hand me a yellow sticky?

I’m two-thirds of the way down the aisle when a ten-year-old pushes and reaches in front of me for a Super Hero spiral notebook. He glances at my boring hard-bound composition books. “You can’t tear out the pages on those,” he says in a know-it-all fourth grade voice. I smile (sort of) and tell him, “I know; it’s what grown ups use.”

“Why? He asks. I realize that I don’t know – it started in college, and I can’t seem to write in anything else. I want to continue explaining, but his eyes glaze and he moves on quickly to lunch bags.

In my mind, I see my bookshelves in my home office – all the hard-bound composition books lining them – black and white, gray, red, green, blue – this year there are new ones available – polka dots, stripes, multi black and gray swirls. I’ve chosen one of each.

He’ll outgrow spiral, I think – thought he’s right – if I try to tear out a page it often loosens the entire binding held together with stitching and heavy black tape. I’ve lost more than a few pages of important pieces by attempting to do that. Plus I waste half the pages because it’s impossible to spread them open wide enough to write on the back sides. Perhaps there is something to be said for spiral, I consider.

One hundred pages are really 50 and at 50 cents – that’s a penny a page. Go away, kid, don’t get me confused. A penny a page – that’s no bargain at all, I realize. But as I head to check-out, I wear a happy smile on my face and carry my basket full of new school supplies to the cashier.

 Ahh.. fall!

I chuckled this morning as I recounted yesterday’s events while writing in my journal. Included were the following notations: Deb called. Jac texted. Mary texted. Peg emailed. Dana emailed. Mish texted. D called. And suddenly it struck me that it is absolutely impossible to disconnect from the world these days.

There is no escaping the world to wander about a pond for months. From July 4, 1845 to Sept. 6, 1847 Henry David Thoreau lived alone in the cabin he built on the shores of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts.  Reclusive – isolated – internal — with nature as his muse. His self-examination and the effects of nature became his experiment in essential living.

There are at least a couple of problems with that picture. First of all, being isolated often produces insanity instead of creativity. And how long can a person be so introspective? To be honest, I’m not sure I have that much inside that’s worth sharing with the world. I’d bore my readers to death very quickly. It’s hard enough to blog once a week about anything remotely original.

I come up to northern Arizona to commune with nature; it’s true, and to write fiction. At times, the number of outside connections annoys me. If I’m right in the middle of a scene or am experiencing a profound revelation, the ping of a text message can disrupt the process. There is a simple solution, of course – turn off the cell phone and the computer and the tablet and any other devices I own.

But like everyone else, I still check them even if they’re turned off. It’s a habit; it’s addictive. I cannot control the need to check for blinking icons – a new text message, a missed call. Without knowing, I might die …

I read a newspaper article yesterday that said on average, 40% of the work-day is now spent reading and responding to e mail. Productivity has plummeted in the workplace since the inception of e mail. A few simple solutions were recommended: Schedule e mail time for twice per day. (or once if you dare). Look only at red flagged items. And put away the cell phone. I’m sure my daughter would argue that her New York bosses would fire her if she did any of those!

I do know that digital interruptions have increased each year. The amount of e mails I get today, even after retiring, is enormous. There is as much junk e mail in my computer in-box as there is junk mail in my postal box. Hundreds. In fact, there is very little necessary mail in either.

But back to Thoreau – the poor man must have grown weary sitting at that isolated pond day after day. I mean, even a modern day retreat is limited to a few days or at most, a couple of weeks.

What happens for me is that after too many days of isolation my brain turns off and that includes creativity. Human interaction is also important to the process. If you don’t live, what are you going to write about? I’m not an expert on Thoreau. I read him in American Lit class years ago and pull Walden out occasionally. Maybe what made Thoreau’s work interesting to the masses was that back then not everyone had immediate answers to every question via a Google search. Just saying . . . 

School starts in some districts in just one more week. Each year since retirement – three years now – I yearn to put on my new school clothes, pick up my briefcase, and march into my office to help students. I keep thinking that will change; I’ll look back and hardly remember those years. But it never happens.

Not long ago, I was paying my co-pay at an eye clinic when a young lady looked over from the next cubicle and said my name with a question mark at the end. She laughed. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. I hummed and hawed for a moment, squinted my eyes and looked closely at her face. I felt awful that the name escaped me. She obviously remembered me. I finally had to say, “I do know, but it’s just not coming.”

She took me off the hook by telling me her name, now married, and her maiden name. “Ah, of course,” I said. And we both laughed then because, as she freely admits, she had been what we call “a handful” as a teen. And I remembered some of our counseling meetings vividly. She went on to tell me how many of her classmates had moved to the southeast valley where I now live as well. She’s happily married, with kids, a good job. Did I have any part in that? I have no idea. I’d like to think I did, but she probably just simply grew up as we all do.

The fact that she recognized me tells me a lot. And whether I helped turn her life around doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we adults continue to care and to be there for them. I volunteer now at an elementary school. My career was spent at the high school level, but the little guys are much cuter. I look forward to every Wed. morning to get my dose of “kids”.

I hate blogs that preach, but keep in mind how many adults it takes to raise a child these days. A village they say. Consider volunteering at a school near you. Three hours a week helps a classroom teacher tremendously, and more importantly, the looks on those student faces when you walk in that door will warm your heart.

Yes, I’m up in Heber again and yes, the novel is “finished”.  I’ve learned, however, that novels are never finished. Sort of like life itself, I guess.

I tie up the loose ends; make the changes that are needed, the revisions, the edits. It’s easier in the writing, than in life, of course.

I’ve often revised my life; edited out people and events that weren’t working; changed my career, my marital status, my interests. Friends and lovers come and go. I buy a new house, a new car, take new classes, plan a new persona. All in the hopes of improving or correcting, and hopefully making my self better. I wish for a software program that would make it less painful. Changing ourselves is like ripping a bandage off and leaving the open scar for all to see. It is painful and is often fraught with fears and grief. The wonderful moments come after the change itself – if we’ve gotten it right.

The novel is much easier. On my computer, I can do a “find” and “change” process and suddenly Maxine has turned to Naomi. I can search for a date and change the ones I’ve written incorrectly. The delete button is a life saver. I can go through and mark red lines through phrases and words that need to be given a second look. I can color code a section that I’ve recently added to see if it has been an improvement. “Save” and “Save As” help me remember to keep the good parts, name the latest revision, and know that it will still be there when I return.

Oh, if life could be so easy.

       originally published 5/2011

            In twenty minutes the line of blue, black, or red nylon robes will begin marching into the stadium, caps at various angles, and tassels on the left. The first strains of Pomp and Circumstance will choke the throats of every parent in the stands of the stadium.  Moms will swipe away the first of many tears; dads will appear calm and stoic until their son or daughter’s name is announced over the P.A. system, when they will let loose a shrill whistle or a loud ‘that’s my kid’.

            I will not be in those stands tonight but my heart will be there. For ten years I felt like the adopted parent of a third of those students and I shed my first tear with the beginning march and beamed with pride at each and every name announced.  On those nights I had three hundred children, three hundred reasons to applaud and praise.

            I had spent four years with each of them and I knew them all. I knew their doubts and fears, their frustrations with teachers, their stressed out anger when their grades dropped and their smiles of pride when they succeeded.  I dried their tears when love fell apart, I counseled their decisions and hoped they’d make the right one. I pushed them to take the challenge of advanced classes, nagged them to study harder.  I threatened them when they skipped classes. I raced them to the school nurse and accompanied them to the hospital when they over-dosed. I stepped them through their parents’ divorces. I touched their hand when they had a positive pregnancy test. I cried with them and held them when class mates died a tragically young and senseless death.

            I dragged them to the school resource officer when they didn’t want to “narc” or press harassment charges and called child protective services after checking out bruises and black eyes. I met them outside the support group meeting and shoved them through the door to their eating disorder group. I listened to them rage at a parent’s incarceration. I bid them good-bye when they were forced to return to their country of origin. I carried balloons to classrooms and loudly announced scholarships and college admissions. I bragged on their role in the school play, the best dance performance of their careers, the winning touchdown, and the half-time performance of the marching band.

            I pushed, pulled and prodded thousands of students and sometimes felt I knew them better than the parents they lived with.

            And senior year, I counted their credits a dozen or more times making certain their grades and courses would culminate in this last night of their high school careers.

            I watch with pride and tears as they walk across the stage, accept their diploma with their left hand, shake the hand of the principal with their right, and move their tassel to the right side of their cap as they walk back down the stairs, cameras flashing, horns blaring, friends and family calling their names. I grin; they were listening after all.

            Tonight I will not be there but I can visualize it all.  Every graduation is the same from start to finish. I can tell you that at 8:20 the principal will give his final speech following the two students chosen to speak to their classmates, after the introductions of the school board members, the pledge, the class gift to the school.  And at 8:30 he will say the same words he said last year and all the years before that. I am proud to present these graduating seniors and vouch that they have fulfilled all the requirements of the state of Arizona. The first student whose last name begins with ‘A’ will step forward; each row will rise and sit at the same time.  A half hour later caps will fly, parents will rush the field, sad graduation songs will play, and my heart will be there.

           

When I see a gerbera daisy,

I think of my daughter

and Mother’s Day

yellow as the sun

sent to me

with love.

When I see a gerbera daisy

I think of dandelions

growing in the front yard

made into woven bracelets

a gift for my mother

on Mother’s Day.

When I see a dandelion

I think of sunny childhood days-

innocence and playfulness and joy,

bikes, and marbles and jacks,

cloud-watching, kite-flying

and the towering elm trees.

When I see sunny days

I think of my own children-

forts, tree houses, and laughter

Strawberry Shortcake and Darth Vader,

Christmas trees and Halloween costumes,

bedtime stories, wet kisses and warm hugs.

When I drive in the countryside

I see the large yellow sunflowers

nodding their heads in the breeze,

their brown fuzzy tummies holding them erect.

I think of hillsides in Italy,

miles of yellow sunflowers

bringing a smile to my soul.

I see them lifting their heads to the sun

in the Tuscan hills and valleys

where I yearn to live in fields of yellow.

Published in anthology – Grandmother, Mother and Me (Memories, Poetry and Good Food)

Hidden Brook Press 2012 — available on Amazon and in book stores.

Chocolate Fixes Anything By Connie Poole-Wesala

         I looked nothing like my mother. My father’s genes were the stronger. Wanda was tall and thin, blond and hazel-eyed. I was my father’s daughter, or so I thought —short, brunette, bushy eyebrows set above large brown eyes.
        I was quiet and introspective, given to bouts of dark moods, and often a loner. I took pride in that for years. It made me feel somehow mysterious. My mother’s gregarious, outgoing personality, and her insistence on telling total strangers everything she was thinking, embarrassed me. I had no desire to become her. I hated her smelly ashtrays, her constant chatter, her endless cups of coffee and her large costume jewelry.
    Then one afternoon at my dad’s 80th birthday bash, one of my mother’s friends found me at the punch bowl and exclaimed, “You look just like your mother. Doesn’t she, Maxine, doesn’t she look just like Wanda?” Was she suffering from dementia or perhaps cataract affected vision? I wondered. I smiled politely, patted her hand and told her how nice she looked. “You haven’t changed a bit either,” I said.
      For weeks after that, her remarks left a million questions rattling around in my head. I kept glancing in the mirror trying to conjure whatever essence of my mother she had seen. It slowly came into focus, all the lessons absorbed into my being without my notice. I had hosted the party for my dad and entertained “Wanda-style” the many guests I hadn’t seen in years. I chatted and smiled in my one good dress and heard my mother whisper, “I told you, a scarf can make any dress look new.”
My brown eyes faded to her shade of hazel following the birth of my son – the red-haired boy my mother said I’d have. She shared this prediction from her hospital bed. She was fifty-seven and dying from lymphoma. I was thirty-two and pregnant with my second child. I simply shook my head, patted her hand and smiled. I’d already named this baby Angelina.
Eighteen weeks later, as my obstetrician held up a tiny screaming baby boy, he noted my shocked and stricken face and said, “I can’t put him back, mom.” We all had a good laugh, and I heard my mother chortle above my bed in the delivery room. “I believe I told you so,” she said crisply.
In those thirty-two years, my mother implanted herself solidly. After her friends’ observations, I began to see her legacy quite clearly.
Her lessons were many: 
One good dress is better than a dozen cheap ones. I have taken that to heart. 
Save as long as it takes to get the expensive piece of furniture. Ditto! I started with Drexler and antiques. My new home looks like a Pottery Barn display. 
A Democrat can live with a Republican. Been there, done that (twice unfortunately). 
Parent with a decent helping of discipline mixed with unconditional love. My two wonderful adult children are living proof of that.
Women are better drivers. I fly down the freeway as freely as she did the highway between Oklahoma and Kansas. 
Everything tastes better fried, and chocolate cake can fix anything. I love frying chicken and making cream gravy, although my age and digestive system don’t tolerate it so well now. Each year I make my mother’s chocolate cake. I learned recently that it is often called Texas Sheet Cake. Being from Oklahoma, she sort of left out that Texas part.
I learned the most important lessons early on, subliminally. As a young girl I watched my mother sit with her best friend and neighbor, Betty, as they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, complained about husbands and bragged about kids. I rode with her to her friend, Maxine’s, house and watched them chat for hours, saw them laugh while they shopped the Montgomery Ward catalogue and support each other through daily trials.
    When my parents’ friends, Claude and Virginia, came over in the evenings, the women would quietly slip from the family room into the bedroom, leaving the men to talk “golf” and “cars”. I’d wander down the hall shortly after and settle on the floor as the two women sat on the bed and talked about the important issues of “life”. Years later I watched them sit together on my sofa, holding hands and hugging during my mom’s last stages of cancer and chemo – not knowing she’d be gone within the next few weeks.
“Women friends are the most precious gift God gives us,” she told me. “Treasure them and treat them well.” Virginia sat by her side daily until my sister and I took over the death-watch of her last two weeks. 
      Recently I have spent days and hours sitting with my women friends as they faced cancer and surgeries, knowing that they will be the ones to help me when the time comes in the not so distant future. I wonder at the passing of time and see her nod knowingly.
I often feel short-changed by my mother’s untimely death, but she did show me how to die with dignity. We had an agreement before she passed. We were driving through town to an appointment with her oncologist. If she were to die—although she would NOT – but if—she would tap on the window occasionally to let me know she was still around and to reassure me there was a heaven on the other side.
      During the first few months following her funeral, she rang the doorbell. It   terrified me late at night, and my husband would go downstairs with a baseball bat as I followed close behind. There was no one there, of course, and he attributed it to a loose wire. Later, the tapping began; infrequently, out of the blue, always at the bedroom window. I would hop out of bed and race to the back patio planning to see a woodpecker sharply tapping at the wooden eave above the bedroom window or a tree limb smacking in the wind. The knocking became less frequent with each move. But not too long ago I heard the tap and didn’t even bother to get up to look. I just rolled over and said, “Hi, Mom, I’m fine,” and went back to sleep.
I have living proof that genetics are stronger than upbringing. I watch my daughter, Michelle, flit around her kitchen like a humming bird, glass of wine in one hand, stirring a pot with the other. She talks and gestures as she tells a story, and when she walks outside for a quick cigarette, I see my mother in every move. Michelle is fun and active, full of chatter and joie de vivre, enjoying life to its fullest. She tilts her head and uses expressions she never had a chance to observe, and she often surprises me by wearing mom’s large clunky pins and necklaces with pride.
      Mom must be thrilled at her granddaughter’s closet – her shelves lined with no fewer than a hundred pair of shoes. She’d probably want to wear the four-inch Manolo Blahnik’s. I swear she did housework for years in high heels. I can hear Wanda outside on the patio, smoking with her granddaughter, praising her independence and her career. 
       Recently I stood at check-out in Macy’s. The jeans I’d chosen were marked thirty per cent off. Plus I had a coupon! I knew mom would be proud. When the sales clerk said, “That comes to $7.36”, my mouth dropped. As she showed me all the mark-downs, I swear I heard mom beside me. “Go girl, I need coffee and a cigarette after that!”
       I could have used her help earlier this week. I told my son I’d gladly sew a project for him. Two days later I wondered what I’d been thinking. I kept looking up. “I know you’re laughing at me, mother, so stop.” Mom sewed all of my clothes through fifth grade when I decided “store-bought” was better. Although later, she copied expensive prom and dance dresses we could never afford to buy. I’m sure she was thoroughly embarrassed I couldn’t sew three straight seams without glopping up the bobbin. 
Both my sister and I have now lived longer than our mother. Each of our fifty-seventh birthdays was a milestone fraught with worry and concern. Would it be our destiny as well, to leave our own children at such tender ages? Luckily we got our dad’s healthy genes, and that anniversary came and passed. We are intended to live longer.
       That is something my mother never got to teach me – how to age gracefully. How to be sixty, or seventy, or eighty. She left that to my dad who lived to ninety-three. So I have had to figure that out on my own, and I do so knowing that she will tap that window again soon to let me know she is keeping me safe. In the meantime, I’m baking chocolate cake because she was absolutely right … chocolate fixes anything!

This morning, I Googled my name – this is the way I get to my blog site to post. I kept looking at it as I scrolled down the page, and the next page and the following. It took 15 pages before I couldn’t find my name again. I was shocked.

So every thing a person does is now on the internet; anyone can find anything about me? I never thought I’d see this day. I’m still sitting here in amazement at what I found.

Part of me resents the intrusion of my privacy. Part of me (ego) found the number of hits pretty impressive. And part of me appreciates the kick in the butt I got this morning.

I’ve let my blog go for months. I’ve been doing re-writes and revisions on a novel and I just haven’t had time to fit another piece of writing into my day. I haven’t written anything new or creative in almost nine months. I was starting to feel like I never would.

This week I realized how I’d neglected the blog and felt embarrassed for not taking the time to write something new each week. I was just about to close down the site; let it go entirely; I’ve lost my muse; I’m stuck; I’m void of one ounce of creative juice.

But when I scrolled down the pages at my published work — the titles, the first few words — I began to realize that somewhere along the way, this attempt at writing morphed into “writing”. I had forgotten a number of the pieces published in Gila River Review; almost forgotten the anthologies that have accepted my work the past two years. Am I writer? I asked myself. During this revision process, I began to question that. This morning’s findings have now encouraged me.

 I feel pushed to find that muse again. To sit my butt in a chair and just do it. So as much as I resent everyone in the country knowing my business, I guess there is an up side. It made me realize that I can write; I have written; I need to write. It is a part of who I am, and if I quit now, I give up a large part of myself, and that would be a shame even if I’m never published again.

So here I am – at my blog site – pen and paper ready. Here I go…..

On Thursday my daughter and I leave for Paris and we will be sitting – well, probably standing – in the nave of Notre Dame Cathedral on Easter Sunday. We will miss having Easter with my son, Mike. They’re a bit too old for sibling rivalry now though it always reappears when we play board games.

Never was sibling rivalry more apparent than on our Easter Sundays. When Mike was two, the rabbit hid eggs all over our back acreage, on the deck, in the flower pots, inside bushes and Canalilies. Dozens of eggs – plenty for two children. Out of 36, Michelle brought back 35 – one had broken.

Mike stood, lips turned downward and quivering, holding his empty Easter basket in front of him. I shook my head. Perhaps he didn’t understand the game. I hid them again, then sat and watched. Mike stood in one spot surveying the yard, thinking, planning, analyzing while Michelle raced about like a whirling dervish, pulling each egg quickly from its hidden spot into her basket that grew too full to carry. I took Mike by the hand and walked him around the yard pointing to spots that might hide an egg. His eyes twinkled for a moment and he moved toward the goal, and just as he reached forward, his sister flew in like a running back, blocked the opposition and scored the egg. My mouth fell in shock, and she was placed on the deck while I helped Mike find a few eggs.

I’d like to say this behavior stopped, but it did not. At my dad’s in Oklahomathe next year, Michelle raced circles around her brother grabbing one and moving quickly to the next. No matter how much I disciplined, she was relentless.

When we moved to Arizona, two new acquaintances and I took our six kids to a large Easter extravaganza at a Scottsdalepark for their egg hunt. Michelle had traumatized Mike to a point of no return. They called the Start and a hundred kids took off. Michelle flung herself into the pack, quickly taking the lead, and Mike stood there stunned and catatonic unable to move a foot. After ten minutes I located his sister, put his smaller hand into hers, took her full basket, and pointed. “Help your brother get some eggs in his basket!” I barked.

I have annual photos of Mike’s empty Easter basket and his sister’s full one. About age ten, when the plastic eggs were filled with money, Mike got the hang of it. Maybe he just needed more motivation than hard-boiled eggs.

Thanks to his sister, he’s still traumatized at the sight of a balloon – but that’s another story.